In 1991, the town hall in Palma, newly under the control of the Partido Popular following twelve years of PSOE dominance, took a musical decision. It wasn't formally decreed, but there was an unmistakably political angle to the decision. Jazz was for socialists.
This, at any rate, was the implication of the scrapping of the Palma Jazz Festival. It had started ten years before. Over three evenings, starting at 10pm, from 27 to 29 July, 1981, jazz fans were able to go to the auditorium to see performances by the Dexter Gordon Quartet, the Dizzy Gillespie Quartet, the Stan Getz Quartet. Later editions of the festival were to include concerts in the cathedral and by an array of internationally acclaimed artists. The festival had come about largely because of the success of a concert in May, 1981, when the American pianist Keith Jarrett had appeared at the auditorium. In terms of star names from the jazz world of the time, these four - Jarrett, Gordon, Gillespie and Getz - were firmly among the A-List.
It is perhaps fair to say that jazz does, or did anyway, have a bit of a political thing going on. Maybe it was all to do with the roots of the music. Maybe it was the nature of improvisation - the freeing of the mind, its liberalising. Maybe there was also an element of the religious: there is many a jazz musician who from times past and times present has discovered Buddhism, for instance.
But to classify jazz as something "socialist" was of course to deny the music to the many who were anything but socialists. Music, as a general rule, doesn't recognise political ideologies as pre-requisites either for its performance or its appreciation. The decision taken, however, and jazz in Mallorca received a distinct kick to its syncopation. The enormous popularity that it had in the 1980s was to take some time to be recaptured.
A generation on from the somewhat bizarre attitude of the town hall, it hasn't been the PP which has been causing disquiet in jazz circles but the other lot. For reasons hard to fathom, the ministry of education, led by PSOE, had decided to reverse a decision taken in the early spring of last year by the Music Conservatory in Palma. It had informed the education (and culture) ministry that, from the start of the 2015-2016 course, it would be including studies in jazz and modern music for the first time. The ministry didn't appear to have any issue with this. Indeed, a year later, the by then education minister, Nuria Riera, was only too glad to appear in the photos taken at the celebration of International Jazz Day. It had been sponsored by, among others, the conservatory, the government and the Council of Mallorca, and had been organised by the UNESCO delegation in Mallorca.
All, therefore, appeared well set for the conservatory to start courses for piano, double bass, drums, vocals, saxophone and guitar. Exams for entry into the courses had already taken place, with assessments made for, among other things, an ability to improvise. Then came the bombshell. The chair of jazz and modern music was to be removed. The new education ministry said so.
It has primarily been the intervention of UNESCO that has led to the decision being reversed again. The course will start, as had been projected, but its future is not secure. The ministry is apparently undertaking a period of "reflection" regarding the conservatory's programme, and the jazz and modern music part of this won't be the same for the 2016-2017 course, assuming it is a part.
It isn't clear if the ministry was guided by any dislike of jazz as such or rather by a wish to consider the entire educational offer at the conservatory. Nevertheless, initially taking a decision to scrap the jazz and modern music chair gave the perception that the ministry had taken a dislike to jazz. It does perhaps say something for the influence of UNESCO that it can get a decision changed. The ministry accepts that the rights of those who had enrolled on the course need to be respected.
An institutional attitude, even if it is not being stated, which seems at least indifferent to jazz is highly reminiscent of the attitude in 1991, and it comes at a time, as was the case at the start of the 1990s, when jazz has never been more popular. You can't really move in Mallorca without stumbling across one form of jazz or another. The current vogue is swing, inspired perhaps by the celebration of the life of one of the greats of Mallorcan popular music, Bonet de Sant Pere.
Music, in all its varieties, offers a considerable amount to Mallorcan cultural life and to the island's tourism. Politicians need to recognise this and to stop messing around, just as they had with the symphony orchestra.
Showing posts with label Jazz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jazz. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2015
Saturday, February 08, 2014
The Story Of Mallorcan Jazz
Whether the promotion was any better, however, is open to question. Jazz, and the same can be said for all forms of music on the island, does not tend to get a look-in on those lists of the usual-suspect, alternatives-to-sun-and-beach tourism activities. Gastronomy, culture, nature, cycling. You know these lists only too well. Music? Well no, not really. Be the music, say, Sa Pobla Jazz or the Pollensa Festival, it tends to be treated if not as an afterthought then as an add-on, an optional extra for the tourist who might stumble across an event rather than be drawn by a direct appeal to his or her musical tastes.
For an island which has an enormous amount of music of all varieties, an apparently official indifference to this music's existence is difficult to comprehend. The endless saga as to the survival of the Balearics Symphony Orchestra has done this officialdom little credit. Yes, it costs money to run an excellent orchestra, but there are times when benefits, both tangible because of audience revenue and intangible because of cultural enrichment, should be given greater prominence when a bean-counting cost-benefit analysis is being made.
Jazz in winter, of which there is a good amount, is the preserve for the most part of the clubs which offer it. Though Jazz Voyeur closes for two months from the middle of January, there are other venues. Sala Dante, the Blue Jazz Club at the Hotel Saratoga, the Garito Café.
The story of jazz in Mallorca started, to all intents and purposes, with a pioneer in the early 1950s. That pioneer was Vicenç Montoliu i Massana, better known as Tete Montoliu. He wasn't a native of Mallorca (he was from Barcelona), but Montoliu became intimately associated with the development of jazz music on the island from the '50s. Montoliu, who died in 1997, was arguably the most important jazz pianist Spain had produced. Like George Shearing and Ray Charles, Montoliu was blind, but his incapacity didn't hinder him. In 1952, at the age of nineteen, he played in Mallorca for the first time. During that decade he appeared at venues such as Tito's club in Palma and at the Hotel Formentor. But this wasn't necessarily an entirely satisfying time for him. His jazz, which then was mainly bebop and Latin, had to be moderated for the burgeoning tourism industry. He was jazz-lite.
In truth, jazz was very much a minority musical genre in Mallorca until the 1980s. This was largely due to the fact that the Franco regime hadn't been that keen on it. The regime had enough problems trying to keep youth exposed to British and American pop music in check than to go adding to them by permitting other forms of music at variance with the patriotic styles it preferred. Nevertheless, both Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton appeared at Tagomago in the 1960s. Big international star names apart, however, jazz was largely ignored in Mallorca, except by Montoliu and collaborators he teamed up with. This all changed from 1980 onwards. Montoliu began to appear very much more regularly in Mallorca, and a concert of 7 May, 1981, which also featured the American pianist Keith Jarrett, was to prove to be a breakthrough occasion and helped to bring about the Palma International Jazz Festival, an event which, for the first time, brought jazz to a wider audience and away from exclusive or elite clubs. Montoliu went on to also perform in less likely settings than clubs or auditoriums. In 1982 he played with a gospel choir in Palma Cathedral and in 1984 in the church in Alaró.
The 1980s represented a decade that was a high point for jazz in Mallorca. In 1991, something happened which reduced its popularity. That was the local election. Palma town hall, which had been controlled by the PSOE socialists since 1979, came under the control of the Partido Popular. The jazz festival was scrapped. The reason? Good question. But there was more than just a hint of it having been because jazz was seen as being "socialist". Indeed, it was if jazz became proscribed. Montoliu played at a hotel in Cala Ratjada. The audience was tiny. There was no press coverage. His final appearance, six months before his death, was in Palma's Gran Hotel.
It was the festival in Sa Pobla which revived jazz, and the Jazz Voyeur summer festival season is, in a way, the offspring of the one-time Palma festival. These summer traditions have spilled over into the winter. There is jazz on a winter's day in many places across Mallorca, not just in Palma. But those days owe a great deal of debt to one man - Tete Montoliu.
* I acknowledge an article by Francesc Vicens for information about Montoliu.
Photo from Wikipedia: Tete Montoliu in 1984 with Bobby Hutcherson.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Still Glowing: Al Jarreau
Back in the mid-seventies the music of choice was jazz. Primarily this meant jazz crossover like Weather Report and George Duke, the jazz funk of The Crusaders, the exclamatory pianism of Keith Jarrett, the mysteriously bleak European soundscapes of Ralph Towner and Jan Garbarek, or the Latin-influenced Chick Corea. This was a time when jazz made its comeback, having been put into the musical shadows by pop, soul and rock in the sixties. There was a critical mass of artists, many of whom were part of a lineage from Miles Davis and some, especially the Europeans, who broke new ground by amalgamating symphonic and folk traditions with a greatly subdued tendency to improvise; it had been over-improvisation, discordant and interminable, that had previously pushed jazz towards the unlistenable.
What was conspicuous by its absence from most of this jazz was singing. And when instrumental groups such as Weather Report eventually got round to using a vocalist, the sound was totally different. The spell was broken and the group was never the same again. Similarly, The Crusaders found Randy Crawford and wandered off into the cabaret twilight, never to recapture the drive that had characterised the group's funk chunk of the earlier 70s. Corea was rare in managing to successfully integrate vocals into the dominant instrumental style of the time, Flora Purim having featured on his first two Return to Forever albums.
Jazz singing was all too easily associated with a smoochy, lounge-lizard, bebop vocalising. It was limp-wristed smoothiness packaged for the less-than-aficionado audience. It was the jazz singer's misfortune that he or she was shepherded into territory marked the variety television show and reduced to having to churn out schlock, shake the head in an infuriatingly smug manner and smile in a way that combined conceitedness with lasciviousness. It was horrible, and it mattered not if it were a male or female singer; both were equally repulsive. Just pause for a moment and realise what Amy Winehouse was like when she sang jazz. This was how it should have been back in the sixties but all too rarely was.
This instrumental jazz world of the seventies was disrupted when a previously unheard of artist suddenly turned up one day, having released an album that wasn't instrumental. The title of the album was "Glow". The artist, the singer was Al Jarreau.
Jarreau slotted into the general crossover of the time, "Glow" featuring, among others, members of The Crusaders. The result was not earth-shattering - it was all pretty laidback and gentle - but it showcased, and this was what was different, a singer, and one, moreover, who didn't have the cabaret objectionableness that had become associated with jazz singers. It was one, despite his also being identifiably "soulful", that didn't do the shouty stuff of, for instance, a Wilson Pickett. There was more of an Al Green or Marvin Gaye subtlety but there was also an astonishing ability to impersonate instruments.
Jarreau could play the flute, and this was just one of the instruments he could ape vocally. His style was unique. He went on a world tour not long after "Glow" came out. Recordings from that tour went into the album "Look To The Rainbow", and he became something of a global star. And one of the recordings may well have come from a concert he gave in London.
I don't remember now which theatre it was; the Coliseum possibly. What I do remember is going along to the box office during the day to collect tickets for the gig. From the lobby I could hear that Jarreau was doing a sound check. I didn't ask anyone. It was probably verboten, but I went into the auditorium, sat down and was treated to half an hour of free concert. I thought about applauding at the end but reckoned that this would have been unwise. I sneaked out, just as I had sneaked in, having sat through an illicit thirty minutes of coital-sound-check-interrupted musical orgasm.
Jarreau and indeed much of the jazz of the time were to pass into my own musical history. Only the Pat Metheny Group, with what can now be described as being almost ambient or trance, survived the onslaught of punk, post-punk, indie, electronica and then club. But Jarreau has survived. Not only musically but in health terms. He has had heart problems and was diagnosed with pneumonia last year. He has recovered, and next Sunday (28 April), he'll be playing the Palma Arena. I don't know if I'll go, but if I'm anywhere in the vicinity earlier in the day, then I might just sneak in for the sound check.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Crossing Over: Jazz in Spain
Depending on who you prefer to believe, jazz in Spain has either been in decline for twenty years or has never been so popular. The decline argument is one that forms the background to a current exhibition at Madrid's National Library dedicated to the history of jazz in Spain, and there are two main reasons for believing that there has been and still is a decline: one, an apparent loss of popularity in the early 1990s; two, a current-day problem with funding.
The argument doesn't really stand up, just as an argument which has it that jazz was repressed during the Franco era stands only so much scrutiny. The common belief is that jazz underwent a re-birth after Franco, having been popular prior to the Civil War. This belief requires the view that there was repression under Franco. There was during the earlier years, but so there was for mostly everything. The 1960s brought about significant change, and while Spanish pop music was generally rubbish and had to be happy, happy, touristy pap, jazz was treated with far greater respect. The first international jazz festival in Spain (Barcelona's) started in 1966, coinciding with a time when the world of jazz had edged into an era labelled "contemporary".
There were two fortuitous elements that helped to propel Spanish jazz into the general consciousness, but neither of them was Spanish as such. They were the titles of two recordings: Miles Davis's "Sketches of Spain" in 1960 and Chick Corea's simply entitled "Spain" in 1972. Purely by association and then also by imitation, jazz in Spain underwent a renaissance and Spanish jazz, or rather Spanish and Latin rhythms, were exported and crossed over into the contemporary world of jazz.
What is true is that jazz did enjoy a golden age of popularity in the later 1970s and 1980s, but the sudden explosion of jazz magazines, jazz programmes as well as more festivals (some of which still survive) has to be seen within the context of the cultural release and liberation that occurred in the years immediately after Franco's death. Its popularity was always likely to be difficult to sustain, however, just as it was elsewhere. The emergence of all manner of popular musical genres plus a probably inevitable burst of a bubble, formed in the 1970s by Corea, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and others and which had helped to shoot jazz to unprecedented levels of worldwide interest, led to a waning in popularity.
What really happened in the 1990s, though, was evidence of the cyclical nature of music and of genres to re-invent themselves and to emerge in different forms. Jazz, partly because it is essentially freer in its form than other styles of music, is able to transform itself. It may not be "jazz", whatever the term really means, but in its ability to cross over and merge with other musical genres, it retains a jazz essence. Purists may not always appreciate this corruption, but fusion has helped to keep jazz popular, and in today's Spain its popularity remains undiminished. The loss of funding, as has been the case in Mallorca for both the Jazz Voyeur and Sa Pobla festivals, doesn't indicate a lack of popularity; it indicates unfortunate realities of economic life and of economies' inabilities to adequately support the arts and culture.
Crossover into flamenco, associated most obviously with Paco de Lucia, gave jazz a specifically Spanish flavour, though flamenco crossover had been attempted earlier, the American vibes player Lionel Hampton having introduced castanets, not exactly successfully, in the late 1950s. The more recent crossover and the subsequent further amalgamation of chill into the flamenco-jazz mix have created a hybrid of Ibizan club music and the tradition of Andalucía, the sound of which is de rigueur for any establishment claiming to offer "chill".
While flamenco has helped to breathe different life into Spanish jazz, other local musical traditions have also crossed over. Catalonian folk music is one such. But for all that jazz is popular in Mallorca, the same crossover hasn't really occurred here. An artist who has given it a go is Onofre Garcías, who on his 2011 album "Migration" took some Mallorcan folk music traditions, collaborated with Mike Oldfield, and ended up sounding not unlike Mike Oldfield.
What hasn't happened, as far as I am aware, is a genuine crossover using Mallorcan folk instruments, the pipes, the flutes, even the weird ximbomba. Yet there is no reason why not. Brazilian crossover jazz took off with the help of native instruments, so why not Mallorcan crossover? Despite the National Library's exhibition suggesting otherwise, jazz does retain its popularity, and a key reason why lies with how it has embraced other musical styles.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The argument doesn't really stand up, just as an argument which has it that jazz was repressed during the Franco era stands only so much scrutiny. The common belief is that jazz underwent a re-birth after Franco, having been popular prior to the Civil War. This belief requires the view that there was repression under Franco. There was during the earlier years, but so there was for mostly everything. The 1960s brought about significant change, and while Spanish pop music was generally rubbish and had to be happy, happy, touristy pap, jazz was treated with far greater respect. The first international jazz festival in Spain (Barcelona's) started in 1966, coinciding with a time when the world of jazz had edged into an era labelled "contemporary".
There were two fortuitous elements that helped to propel Spanish jazz into the general consciousness, but neither of them was Spanish as such. They were the titles of two recordings: Miles Davis's "Sketches of Spain" in 1960 and Chick Corea's simply entitled "Spain" in 1972. Purely by association and then also by imitation, jazz in Spain underwent a renaissance and Spanish jazz, or rather Spanish and Latin rhythms, were exported and crossed over into the contemporary world of jazz.
What is true is that jazz did enjoy a golden age of popularity in the later 1970s and 1980s, but the sudden explosion of jazz magazines, jazz programmes as well as more festivals (some of which still survive) has to be seen within the context of the cultural release and liberation that occurred in the years immediately after Franco's death. Its popularity was always likely to be difficult to sustain, however, just as it was elsewhere. The emergence of all manner of popular musical genres plus a probably inevitable burst of a bubble, formed in the 1970s by Corea, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and others and which had helped to shoot jazz to unprecedented levels of worldwide interest, led to a waning in popularity.
What really happened in the 1990s, though, was evidence of the cyclical nature of music and of genres to re-invent themselves and to emerge in different forms. Jazz, partly because it is essentially freer in its form than other styles of music, is able to transform itself. It may not be "jazz", whatever the term really means, but in its ability to cross over and merge with other musical genres, it retains a jazz essence. Purists may not always appreciate this corruption, but fusion has helped to keep jazz popular, and in today's Spain its popularity remains undiminished. The loss of funding, as has been the case in Mallorca for both the Jazz Voyeur and Sa Pobla festivals, doesn't indicate a lack of popularity; it indicates unfortunate realities of economic life and of economies' inabilities to adequately support the arts and culture.
Crossover into flamenco, associated most obviously with Paco de Lucia, gave jazz a specifically Spanish flavour, though flamenco crossover had been attempted earlier, the American vibes player Lionel Hampton having introduced castanets, not exactly successfully, in the late 1950s. The more recent crossover and the subsequent further amalgamation of chill into the flamenco-jazz mix have created a hybrid of Ibizan club music and the tradition of Andalucía, the sound of which is de rigueur for any establishment claiming to offer "chill".
While flamenco has helped to breathe different life into Spanish jazz, other local musical traditions have also crossed over. Catalonian folk music is one such. But for all that jazz is popular in Mallorca, the same crossover hasn't really occurred here. An artist who has given it a go is Onofre Garcías, who on his 2011 album "Migration" took some Mallorcan folk music traditions, collaborated with Mike Oldfield, and ended up sounding not unlike Mike Oldfield.
What hasn't happened, as far as I am aware, is a genuine crossover using Mallorcan folk instruments, the pipes, the flutes, even the weird ximbomba. Yet there is no reason why not. Brazilian crossover jazz took off with the help of native instruments, so why not Mallorcan crossover? Despite the National Library's exhibition suggesting otherwise, jazz does retain its popularity, and a key reason why lies with how it has embraced other musical styles.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Free For All: Mallorca and the arts
If you caught Kenny Garrett and his quartet in Sa Pobla earlier this week or will be rocking up at Pollensa's Sant Domingo cloister to get a bit of the Chamber Orchestra of the National Theatre of Prague tomorrow, then I hope you have made and will make the most of them. Both the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival and the Pollensa International Music Festival could become dodos of Mallorca's arts world. Extinct.
The Pollensa festival very nearly didn't happen this year. It did thanks to a sofa-thon at the tourism ministry. Carlos Delgado had his people scrambling around on the ministry settees, hunting for any loose euros that had fallen down the backs, and they came up with a couple of hundred thousand in the nick of time. The mountain of coins duly deposited in the Sant Domingo cloister, the sound of their jangling competed with an ominous bass, the noise of the ministry saying we've helped you out this time, but don't expect us to in future.
The ministry will announce next week which events have passed a test that will guarantee funding from a reserve pot that isn't exactly overflowing. 600 grand is up for grabs for various arts festivals, but not all might qualify. As important is what happens to them down the line. For some the end of the line may well have been reached, and this includes the Sa Pobla Jazz and Pollensa festivals.
Arts funding is often at the bottom of the public spending food chain, though in Mallorca it has seemed to occupy a rather higher level. In part, this has been because the arts are seen as a "good thing" rather than there being any real attempt to quantify benefits. But this is the nature of the beast. Arts contribute to a general welfare, a general quality of life; they shouldn't always be the target of bean-counters. The attitude has not been wrong, far from it, but current circumstances have exposed the vulnerable sustainability of the arts, Mallorcan style.
Certain judgements do occasionally have to be made. In the case of the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival, it hasn't simply been a case of putting on some free concerts. There are also the workshops that take place each year, so there is a music educational element to the festival as well. But to come to the free concerts, for whose benefit really are they?
The concerts attract a "nice" Jazz Club crowd (of the type satirised by John Thomson's Louis Balfour character in "The Fast Show"), but they also attract the locals. Nothing wrong with this, the concerts are after all taking place in their town. However, a thing with jazz is that it is an acquired taste. Some of it can be a dreadful racket. Jazz is most certainly not Mallorcan folk music or the direness of the "orchestras" that get dragged onto the stages of Mallorca's fiestas and churn out kitsch cabaret versions of sixties' tunes; the sort of act that might once have been on the under card at Bournemouth's Winter Gardens below Norman Vaughan, the Rockin' Berries and Mrs. Mills. They're rubbish, but the Mallorcan oldsters seem to like them.
Put a McCoy Tyner thumping a piano, a Kenny Garrett wailing on a sax in front of an old Sa Pobla farmer who has pitched up with his missus along with their picnic of potato fritters, trempó and vino, and what exactly does the old farmer make of them? Not a lot probably, but it's free.
I might be doing old Sa Pobla farmers a disservice. Perhaps they are all avid jazz enthusiasts who have vast collections of Blue Note and ECM discs stashed in an outhouse, but I somewhat doubt it.
Free bring free, and free having been free for several years in Sa Pobla creates an expectation that free it will always be. Free is wonderful, and the provision of free entertainment in Mallorca has been laudable. It has enhanced the general quality of life. It would be sad for it to no longer be free, but the alternative has to be considered.
The problem is that charging probably wouldn't cover costs. It doesn't in Pollensa. You can fork out up to 45 euros for a concert during the music festival, but the festival still needs huge amounts of state funding. The Sant Domingo cloister is not exactly Wembley Stadium; it's tiny in terms of what it can generate through ticket sales.
We are, I'm afraid, going to have to accept that some of the cherished and sometimes superb free arts in Mallorca are likely to disappear. Unless, that is, they sell their soul to the corporate shilling of sponsorship. Were it available.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The Pollensa festival very nearly didn't happen this year. It did thanks to a sofa-thon at the tourism ministry. Carlos Delgado had his people scrambling around on the ministry settees, hunting for any loose euros that had fallen down the backs, and they came up with a couple of hundred thousand in the nick of time. The mountain of coins duly deposited in the Sant Domingo cloister, the sound of their jangling competed with an ominous bass, the noise of the ministry saying we've helped you out this time, but don't expect us to in future.
The ministry will announce next week which events have passed a test that will guarantee funding from a reserve pot that isn't exactly overflowing. 600 grand is up for grabs for various arts festivals, but not all might qualify. As important is what happens to them down the line. For some the end of the line may well have been reached, and this includes the Sa Pobla Jazz and Pollensa festivals.
Arts funding is often at the bottom of the public spending food chain, though in Mallorca it has seemed to occupy a rather higher level. In part, this has been because the arts are seen as a "good thing" rather than there being any real attempt to quantify benefits. But this is the nature of the beast. Arts contribute to a general welfare, a general quality of life; they shouldn't always be the target of bean-counters. The attitude has not been wrong, far from it, but current circumstances have exposed the vulnerable sustainability of the arts, Mallorcan style.
Certain judgements do occasionally have to be made. In the case of the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival, it hasn't simply been a case of putting on some free concerts. There are also the workshops that take place each year, so there is a music educational element to the festival as well. But to come to the free concerts, for whose benefit really are they?
The concerts attract a "nice" Jazz Club crowd (of the type satirised by John Thomson's Louis Balfour character in "The Fast Show"), but they also attract the locals. Nothing wrong with this, the concerts are after all taking place in their town. However, a thing with jazz is that it is an acquired taste. Some of it can be a dreadful racket. Jazz is most certainly not Mallorcan folk music or the direness of the "orchestras" that get dragged onto the stages of Mallorca's fiestas and churn out kitsch cabaret versions of sixties' tunes; the sort of act that might once have been on the under card at Bournemouth's Winter Gardens below Norman Vaughan, the Rockin' Berries and Mrs. Mills. They're rubbish, but the Mallorcan oldsters seem to like them.
Put a McCoy Tyner thumping a piano, a Kenny Garrett wailing on a sax in front of an old Sa Pobla farmer who has pitched up with his missus along with their picnic of potato fritters, trempó and vino, and what exactly does the old farmer make of them? Not a lot probably, but it's free.
I might be doing old Sa Pobla farmers a disservice. Perhaps they are all avid jazz enthusiasts who have vast collections of Blue Note and ECM discs stashed in an outhouse, but I somewhat doubt it.
Free bring free, and free having been free for several years in Sa Pobla creates an expectation that free it will always be. Free is wonderful, and the provision of free entertainment in Mallorca has been laudable. It has enhanced the general quality of life. It would be sad for it to no longer be free, but the alternative has to be considered.
The problem is that charging probably wouldn't cover costs. It doesn't in Pollensa. You can fork out up to 45 euros for a concert during the music festival, but the festival still needs huge amounts of state funding. The Sant Domingo cloister is not exactly Wembley Stadium; it's tiny in terms of what it can generate through ticket sales.
We are, I'm afraid, going to have to accept that some of the cherished and sometimes superb free arts in Mallorca are likely to disappear. Unless, that is, they sell their soul to the corporate shilling of sponsorship. Were it available.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, July 18, 2008
A Smooth Style Of Syncopation
All that jazz. Lurking among the fiestas of summer is a wholly different series of events - the Sa Pobla Jazz festival, sorry the Sa Pobla International Jazz festival; the word "international" is important. Festival is perhaps a bit misleading. It implies a continuous weekend or some such, a la Glastonbury for example; Sa Pobla in fact offers a series of events during August, four main concerts plus workshops and film. But be this as it may.
This will be the fourteenth Sa Pobla festival. And it does attract some heavyweight acts. This year, John Zorn starts the series of concerts on 6 August. Past festivals have seen the likes of Billy Cobham coming to the potato town. For a place with little obvious tourism appeal, Sa Pobla has, by dint of a bit of thought, carved out a place in the summer schedule that bolsters its own local economy, granting its bars and restaurants a piece of summer action that would otherwise have been denied to them.
To link back to what I have been saying about promotion, one has to admire the efforts of Sa Pobla town hall. Go to the town hall's website (http://www.ajsapobla.net/) and the Mallorca Jazz Sa Pobla logo is clearly identified. Click on it and a PDF pops up. A PDF, moreover, that has information in English. It is an international event, and the town hall has internationalised its promotion. Hats off.
The "international" motif is significant. Mallorca does not do international, or only rarely. When it does, as with the golf classic in October, the government steps in and seeks to remove its support. International can be a misnomer. Try this one - as part of Alcúdia's Sant Jaume celebrations there is an evening of "international" folk dance and music (today as it happens). The international element is a group from Catalonia. National international, if you will.
The fiestas and traditions of Mallorca are essentially introspective. It is as though, as a response to the internationalisation of the island through tourism and immigration, there has been a retrenchment or at least a maintenance of those traditions as a buffer against the outside. In one sense, this is understandable and laudable; these are, after all, the island's traditions. However, there is also a sense in which the tradition is used as a form of mass psychology. It was once put to me that the Germans, who have their local events of a similar nature to Mallorca as well as their madcap traditions like Carnival, fell back on those traditions as a response to the shock of Nazism and the castigation of a nation for having failed to prevent it. The comparison is far-fetched admittedly, but there is something of a hankering for the past in Mallorca that is the response to the shock of the new of the past 40 years or so of tourism.
Accordingly, the fiestas and the rest, while having an appeal for the tourist because of their very traditional nature, have failed nevertheless to embrace an internationalisation that might broaden that appeal. I'll give you an example, and one that has taken the message on board - Palma's San Sebastian celebrations in January. The organisers have admitted that more needs to be done to promote San Sebastian internationally; it is the case that, with some of the acts that perform during San Sebastian, it has an international basis. One of the problems with the attempt to market Mallorca and its cultural traditions is that these do not necessarily resonate with an international market. Spread the veneer of internationalisation on top of the tradition and you have something of wider interest. The Pollensa Music Festival is an example, akin to the Sa Pobla Jazz, albeit an artificial cultural device of only nearly 50 years history.
One can of course argue that traditions should be left to themselves - as traditions - and that commercialism should play little part. But in the case of San Sebastian there has been a recognition that this part is far more important than it might once have been; this and the international aspect. It is for the latter reason, and the resultant commercial benefit that might be derived, that Sa Pobla Jazz is important.
And following-up on yesterday. I am grateful for the comments about the tourism foot patrol notion, one of these comments being left as a comment appended to yesterday's piece by "allanglens" who points out that something along these lines has been tried in Glasgow. Might I just say that I cannot respond personally to comments that are attached to the entries, this being one of the reasons why I prefer that they are sent to me by email. But thank you anyway.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Go-Betweens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XDmasbARtE). Today's title - bit obscure admittedly but it is a line from a song by a huge American band of (mainly) the '70s which had a strong jazz influence and have appeared here before now.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
This will be the fourteenth Sa Pobla festival. And it does attract some heavyweight acts. This year, John Zorn starts the series of concerts on 6 August. Past festivals have seen the likes of Billy Cobham coming to the potato town. For a place with little obvious tourism appeal, Sa Pobla has, by dint of a bit of thought, carved out a place in the summer schedule that bolsters its own local economy, granting its bars and restaurants a piece of summer action that would otherwise have been denied to them.
To link back to what I have been saying about promotion, one has to admire the efforts of Sa Pobla town hall. Go to the town hall's website (http://www.ajsapobla.net/) and the Mallorca Jazz Sa Pobla logo is clearly identified. Click on it and a PDF pops up. A PDF, moreover, that has information in English. It is an international event, and the town hall has internationalised its promotion. Hats off.
The "international" motif is significant. Mallorca does not do international, or only rarely. When it does, as with the golf classic in October, the government steps in and seeks to remove its support. International can be a misnomer. Try this one - as part of Alcúdia's Sant Jaume celebrations there is an evening of "international" folk dance and music (today as it happens). The international element is a group from Catalonia. National international, if you will.
The fiestas and traditions of Mallorca are essentially introspective. It is as though, as a response to the internationalisation of the island through tourism and immigration, there has been a retrenchment or at least a maintenance of those traditions as a buffer against the outside. In one sense, this is understandable and laudable; these are, after all, the island's traditions. However, there is also a sense in which the tradition is used as a form of mass psychology. It was once put to me that the Germans, who have their local events of a similar nature to Mallorca as well as their madcap traditions like Carnival, fell back on those traditions as a response to the shock of Nazism and the castigation of a nation for having failed to prevent it. The comparison is far-fetched admittedly, but there is something of a hankering for the past in Mallorca that is the response to the shock of the new of the past 40 years or so of tourism.
Accordingly, the fiestas and the rest, while having an appeal for the tourist because of their very traditional nature, have failed nevertheless to embrace an internationalisation that might broaden that appeal. I'll give you an example, and one that has taken the message on board - Palma's San Sebastian celebrations in January. The organisers have admitted that more needs to be done to promote San Sebastian internationally; it is the case that, with some of the acts that perform during San Sebastian, it has an international basis. One of the problems with the attempt to market Mallorca and its cultural traditions is that these do not necessarily resonate with an international market. Spread the veneer of internationalisation on top of the tradition and you have something of wider interest. The Pollensa Music Festival is an example, akin to the Sa Pobla Jazz, albeit an artificial cultural device of only nearly 50 years history.
One can of course argue that traditions should be left to themselves - as traditions - and that commercialism should play little part. But in the case of San Sebastian there has been a recognition that this part is far more important than it might once have been; this and the international aspect. It is for the latter reason, and the resultant commercial benefit that might be derived, that Sa Pobla Jazz is important.
And following-up on yesterday. I am grateful for the comments about the tourism foot patrol notion, one of these comments being left as a comment appended to yesterday's piece by "allanglens" who points out that something along these lines has been tried in Glasgow. Might I just say that I cannot respond personally to comments that are attached to the entries, this being one of the reasons why I prefer that they are sent to me by email. But thank you anyway.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Go-Betweens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XDmasbARtE). Today's title - bit obscure admittedly but it is a line from a song by a huge American band of (mainly) the '70s which had a strong jazz influence and have appeared here before now.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, August 26, 2007
The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
More on the projected railway to Alcúdia. The Balearic Government seems not - as yet - to have acted on my suggestion to co-opt Sirs Branson and Savile (18 July: How’s About That Then?), but nevertheless it’s full steam ahead. Or should that be full electric ahead? Truth is it’s neither. Though the train project is one of the “big things” of the new government, it is highly questionable whether anything will be done within the lifetime of this government. Studies are being talked about; there is a problem in that plans for the island never envisaged this form of rail development; urbanisations and industrial estates have been put up as artifical barriers.
Thinking about any extension from Sa Pobla, the only route that comes to my mind would be one that circles Sa Pobla, and then follows the road to the Pollensa roundabout and then the new road to Alcúdia. Where it would go then, I’m not sure, but perhaps it could cut across and end up somewhere near the Auditorium. But not without a lot of difficulty. As the Ultima Hora points out, any project is not a “camino de rosas”. Maybe it could carry on alongside the road to the Horse roundabout with a terminal there.
There again, I’m not a civil engineer, so what the heck do I know. Anyway, in addition to the train, there is some idea of there being a linked tram service to the port, which could then also go onto Playa de Muro and Can Picafort. And where, pray, would that go? Still, it’s all very interesting but chances of it happening must be remote.
An extra issue is that it can take forever to get agreement. The Alcúdia industrial park was fifteen years in the offing, so has been the plan to upgrade La Gola in Pollensa to a form of inland marine park. That now finally has the green light, but much of the delay for projects here stems from the regular shifts of government, locally and nationally. So, as for the railway, don’t hold your breath as you may be waiting a long time for a train.
And while on water in Pollensa, there is meant to be a crackdown on excessive domestic use of water. Pollensa does have problems with water, though I wonder whether owners of lush gardens will feel inclined to turn the hoses and sprinklers off.
Yesterday’s Guardia presence on Playa de Muro may have had more to do with a drowning, I’m sorry to have to say.
Better news. The annual Alcúdia Jazz festival is about to get under way (look for info on the WHAT’S ON BLOG). The first gig is on 31 August at the Biblioteca Can Torró with the singer Esther Bosch and the Tià Cardell Group who offer a form of jazz with pop-rock crossover. Not as international as the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival, the programme this year does though include the Boston-based Human Feel who will play the last gig on 29 September. Another act is Pedro Iturralde, one of the prime movers of jazz flamenco. For those who think flamenco can be either ultra-miserable or a lot of fast guitars, clapping, and stamping of feet, the jazz version is far more interesting and often more melodic.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Hedgehoppers Anonymous. Water sprinklers, jazz, it must be today’s title. The album was not by a jazz artist, but it had strong jazz overtones with The Crusaders being featured. Who was it?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thinking about any extension from Sa Pobla, the only route that comes to my mind would be one that circles Sa Pobla, and then follows the road to the Pollensa roundabout and then the new road to Alcúdia. Where it would go then, I’m not sure, but perhaps it could cut across and end up somewhere near the Auditorium. But not without a lot of difficulty. As the Ultima Hora points out, any project is not a “camino de rosas”. Maybe it could carry on alongside the road to the Horse roundabout with a terminal there.
There again, I’m not a civil engineer, so what the heck do I know. Anyway, in addition to the train, there is some idea of there being a linked tram service to the port, which could then also go onto Playa de Muro and Can Picafort. And where, pray, would that go? Still, it’s all very interesting but chances of it happening must be remote.
An extra issue is that it can take forever to get agreement. The Alcúdia industrial park was fifteen years in the offing, so has been the plan to upgrade La Gola in Pollensa to a form of inland marine park. That now finally has the green light, but much of the delay for projects here stems from the regular shifts of government, locally and nationally. So, as for the railway, don’t hold your breath as you may be waiting a long time for a train.
And while on water in Pollensa, there is meant to be a crackdown on excessive domestic use of water. Pollensa does have problems with water, though I wonder whether owners of lush gardens will feel inclined to turn the hoses and sprinklers off.
Yesterday’s Guardia presence on Playa de Muro may have had more to do with a drowning, I’m sorry to have to say.
Better news. The annual Alcúdia Jazz festival is about to get under way (look for info on the WHAT’S ON BLOG). The first gig is on 31 August at the Biblioteca Can Torró with the singer Esther Bosch and the Tià Cardell Group who offer a form of jazz with pop-rock crossover. Not as international as the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival, the programme this year does though include the Boston-based Human Feel who will play the last gig on 29 September. Another act is Pedro Iturralde, one of the prime movers of jazz flamenco. For those who think flamenco can be either ultra-miserable or a lot of fast guitars, clapping, and stamping of feet, the jazz version is far more interesting and often more melodic.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Hedgehoppers Anonymous. Water sprinklers, jazz, it must be today’s title. The album was not by a jazz artist, but it had strong jazz overtones with The Crusaders being featured. Who was it?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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